Winning the election was the easy part

Candidates at all levels now must work together

As hard as it looked, as long as it took, and expensive as it turned out to be, capturing victory was just the first step for Tuesday's political victors - notably President Barack Obama and veteran Rep. Louise Slaughter.

With Congress facing immense and immediate challenges, lawmakers of all stripes, and at all levels, will need to retire the partisan posturing that marked the campaign season and embrace a seemingly long-lost political tool: compromise.

It won't be easy. Slaughter, returning for a 14th term, and fellow Democrat Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, who easily won election to her first full term, return to a Congress that looks very much like the one they left, with the Senate looking to remain in Democratic hands and Republicans holding a comfortable edge in the House. New attitudes will be vital.

That's where Obama must return to his first-term commitment of cooperation and, through renewed effort and leadership, steer Congress, and the nation, forward.

He needs to start immediately. Congress will likely meet in a lame duck session to debate passage of a new farm bill and compromise on an economic package to avert automatic new year's spending cuts and the sunsetting of tax breaks.

As in the national race, the campaigning locally was bare-knuckled, particularly in the state Senate race in which Republican Sean Hanna lost to Democrat Ted O'Brien, and the race in which Slaughter defeated Republican County Executive Maggie Brooks.

O'Brien, along with newly elected Republican Assemblyman Bill Nojay and a small cadre of returning Rochester-area state senators and Assembly members, heads to a statehouse that, like Congress is politically split, but, unlike Congress, has developed the habit of bipartisanship. Washington could do worse than to follow Abany's lead.

As bruising as the campaigns were, they were the easy part. The real challenges for Obama, Congress, the nation and the state lie ahead.